Action TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2016
2:30 P.M.
Stop Shopping Choir and anti-spray activists at Parks Department in support of poison-free parks will meet, speak & sing on the steps directly in front of “the Arsenal,” headquarters of the NYC Parks Dept.
830 5th Ave. and 62nd St. in Manhattan, snow or shine!

In addition to Rev. Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir and the Lower East Side Girls Club choir, speakers include Bertha Lewis (The Black Institute) and Mitchel Cohen (No Spray Coalition).

New York City residents can now discover if New York City sprays Monsanto’s cancer-causing Roundup on their corners, parks, playgrounds, sidewalks and picnic areas. The interactive map is published at http://www.revbilly.com/map.

The map will be presented to Parks Commissioner Silver at a meeting with the The Black Institute, Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir, No Spray Coalition and other members of the Coalition Against Poison Parks, on Tuesday afternoon following the gathering on the Parks Dept.’s front steps. The groups demand an end to the use of Roundup and glyphosate in New York City and full public disclosure.

Reverend Billy and The Stop Shopping Choir is pursuing legal options to force the City to reveal all locations where glyphosate is sprayed.

According to “Pesticide Use by New York City Agencies in 2014,” published in June 2015, New York City applied glyphosate 2,748 times. Through a Freedom of Information Law request, the City has revealed only 2,000 locations of glyphosate in 2014. Data from Central Park and other areas managed by non-profit private conservancies has not been shared with the public.

Before the meeting, there will be a choir performance in support of the proposed RoundUp Ban on the steps of the Parks Department headquarters at the Arsenal at Central Park. Members of the Lower East Side Girls Club and The Stop Shopping Choir will perform at 2:30pm. The public are welcome to join the Choirs in song.

Monsanto’s RoundUp continues to be the major weapon in the New York City Parks Department’s arsenal of dangerous herbicides. The World Health Organization now says that RoundUp’s key ingredient, glyphosate, is a probable carcinogen.

The frequency of Parks Department’s application of Monsanto’s RoundUp doubled since 2013 when 1,300 spraying events were reported, paralleling the laying off of hundreds of workers who used to “weed” by hand.

In 2014, overall herbicides use increased by 16% with a 9% increase in the volume of glyphosate applied — all at a time when the public is becoming increasingly concerned with synthetic pesticides and herbicides.

Studies have found glyphosate to also be linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other cancers, birth defects, and celiac disease, allergies, asthma, and chronic fatigue syndrome. Glyphosate is also one of the main causes of the devastation of the Monarch butterfly and the poisoning of pets and wildlife. Pesticides are hormone disruptors; many have been linked to Parkinson’s disease and other grave neurological disorders.

Glyphosate is persistent in body tissue, blood and breast milk. Exposure to RoundUp and other herbicides and pesticides has caused pregnancy problems, including stillbirths, infertility, and greatly lowered sperm counts.

The Coalition Against Poisoned Parks is calling on NYC’s government to stop its use of glyphosate in our public parks and other public areas.

Thinking Holistically

Pest Control Chain Reaction
To treat a malaria outbreak in Borneo in the 1950s, the World Health Organization (WHO) sprayed DDT to kill mosquitoes. But the DDT also killed parasitic wasps which were controlling thatch-eating caterpillars. As a result, the thatched roofs of many homes fell down, and the DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckoes, which were in turn eaten by cats. The cats perished, which led to the multiplication of rats, and then outbreaks of sylvatic plague and typhus.
To put an end to this destructive chain of events, WHO had to parachute 145,000 live cats into the area to control the rats.